


Legendary

by bwyn



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Final Battle, Gen, Reincarnation, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 10:11:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10897173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bwyn/pseuds/bwyn
Summary: He realizes that the end for them was never guaranteed to be falling in a blaze of glory, saving the universe from another tyrant bent on enslaving entire worlds.Join me, whispers Blue again, pushing against his mind.





	Legendary

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to _something i need_ by onerepublic and thought to myself "what if uplifting MCD could be a thing"

The city is burning beneath them, glass structures flickering and melting beneath tongues of flame. Smoke black as pitch pours into the atmosphere, sparks like dancing constellations against the dark backdrop. There’s something beautiful about the destruction – a sad and terrible beauty, merciless and innocent but for what caused it. 

 

The beast rears its head and howls; Lance feels it reverberate within his chest. His lion tries to dissipate the fear thrumming through his veins with a purr, but despite the good intentions, it doesn’t help. They’ve taken down beasts before, watched cities fall and forests burn and oceans steam, yet there’s never an end. There’s always another enemy, but this time it feels different.

 

Once more, the creature – like some chimera made of organic and synthetic material – rises amongst the withering carcass of the city. Glittering wings, transparent and veined like a glass-winged butterfly, peel away from its body and lift it from the ground. The smoke and ash rush out in a gust of wind, obscuring Lance’s vision as the body of Voltron braces itself. 

 

“Why won’t it die?” growls Keith, the once flaming sword held in his lion’s jaws sputtering pathetically. 

 

“We need to get it away from the surface,” says Hunk as the beast faces them in the air, “Before it hurts anyone else.”

 

_ Hurt _ . An understatement. Lance saw the bodies. He sees them now, reduced to twisted forms unrecognizable from the debris. 

 

“Princess, what’s your ETA?” asks Shiro, voice strained. It’s telling.

 

Allura doesn’t respond immediately, but when she does, she’s breathing heavily and there’s a blanket of static with every gasp. “We won’t be able to make it to you anytime soon. There’s too many people stranded. Coran is taking out the pods as we speak.”

 

The chimera shrieks and turns away – towards the desperate horde of people fleeing towards distant fields. Lance grits his teeth as he and Hunk match each other, pulling on their controls and moving Voltron into action. The mecha leaps over the molten downtown, Pidge’s lion shooting forward to grab the beast’s serrated tail. The flameless sword comes down again and again, but the edge only chips against the impossible hide. Keith snarls something and Pidge spits a curse of her own when the tail yanks free from her jaws. 

 

“If we could just toss it into the damn sun, that’d be great,” snaps Pidge, despite knowing full well the state of their thrusters.  

 

Red and green metal closes around the chimera’s ankles as it gains altitude. Lance’s teeth are still grinding as he tries to maintain his footing on the planet’s surface, but the debris are slick beneath them, and Hunk shouts a desperate warning as he slips. With a sickening lurch, they’re in the air, the beast dragging them forcefully skyward. Sunlight refracts through its wings, blinding Lance when he dares look up.

 

Shiro calls for them to hold steady, not lose their grip, and Lance sees an opportunity – “We can do it. Throw it into the sun – we can make it happen.”

 

“Are you  _ serious?” _ shouts Keith incredulously.

 

_ Ironic _ , Lance thinks, coming from the most reckless of them all. “We can’t get off the surface on our own, but if this thing keeps going, and we break through the atmosphere –”

 

“Then we can use what power we have remaining to get to the sun –”

 

“– it can’t fly through space –”

 

“– toss it in –”

 

“– and finish this fight,” breathes Lance over the tumbling excitement of the rest of the crew. 

 

“Princess,” begins Shiro.

 

“Do it,” she says.

 

The beast continues skyward, spitting magma from its unhinged jaw like some kind of foul dragon. It doesn’t seem to notice that it’s taking them exactly where they want to go, higher and higher, until there’s clouds above and below. Lance grips his lion’s controls tighter, his knuckles white. They’re almost there – this is it –

 

Something’s different.

 

His stomach feels it first when his feet leave the pedals. The weightlessness as ascent turns into descent – as the glass and metal and bone beast dragging them up changes its mind in midair. It loops in a broad arc that has Voltron whipping around like a ragdoll, feet dangling wildly. Hunk tries to control their fall with what power in his thrusters he has left, but it’s useless. The chimera is diving, pulling them along behind it. 

 

Icy fingers drag down Lance’s spine – Blue’s presence. There’s a phantom pain in his palms as Pidge cries out, Keith gasps and Shiro curses something fierce. The beast is free again, gaining speed as Voltron shudders against the wall of wind holding it aloft. 

 

“It’s turning, brace yourselves!” shouts Shiro.

 

The impact as the beast whirls on them is brutal. Lance jerks in his seat, the belts keeping him there cutting against what material his armor doesn’t cover. Blue is there in a cool blanket, soothing the burn in his lungs as he gasps for air. He doesn’t need to see it to know the chimera has its claws sunk deep into the green and yellow lions, its jaws trying for a grip on Voltron’s head. Metal groans under the strain of maintaining its structure. 

 

_ Join me. _

 

The difference between this battle and all the others is clear to Lance as the clouds part to let them pass. 

 

This one is against a wild, amoral opponent. A creature that woke from a slumber that stretched a millennia before Allura’s birth, hungry with its food source missing amidst centuries of development. 

 

Before, it was fleets of ships, some with opponents that could be reasoned with, others with those they could not – but they always prevailed. Lance thought they always would.

 

Now he realizes that the end for them was never guaranteed to be falling in a blaze of glory, saving the universe from another tyrant bent on enslaving entire worlds. 

 

_ Join me _ , whispers Blue again, pushing against his mind.

 

The rest of the team is quiet, struggling in silence against the beast tearing them apart. The structural bonds keeping Voltron together breaks, and five separate lions are thrust into freefall. The beast shrieks and flaps wildly as it loses its grip. Its tail lashes out to strike the blue lion. Lance watches cracks spider web across the glass, turning the world into a tilted kaleidoscope of images. 

 

Lance exhales frost. 

 

“Paladins.” Allura’s voice is a far off thing, battling static to reach them. “Paladins? Respond. Respond. Please, respond – if you sustain anymore damage, you will die –”

 

The ocean stretches beneath them, meeting the burning coastal city in a wall of vapor. Beyond the fields, beyond the evacuees, there are other cities, other settlements, other oceans – and all of them will burn.

 

Being a legend is meaningless if they put their lives above those counting on them from below, eyes cast to the sky as their heroes fall. 

 

Lance’s lips tremble as he pulls them into a smile. “What’s that thing they say about death? About it being the next great adventure?”

 

The cracks spread, its edges like frost as they meet one another. 

 

Pidge’s voice is calm when she says, “It’s gonna have to be some next shit to come anywhere  _ close _ to an adventure, after everything we’ve been through.”

 

“Guess we’ll have to see,” says Keith as Hunk chuckles.

 

“Together,” says Shiro, and Lance’s smile broadens. His tears are cold, but they don’t spill, even as the beast twists and grabs the green lion – Pidge – in its claws. From its mouth spills forth liquid flames, reaching greedily.

 

“Green’s calling me,” whispers Pidge, and then she laughs, “Guess I’ll be off then.”

 

She doesn’t scream when it happens, but Lance feels it in the space she leaves behind in his chest. His eyes slide shut as he gasps on the ice coating his throat. 

 

Blue whispers to him.

 

When he opens his eyes again, he’s no longer a boy barely twenty, but a beaten and bruised lion with claws reaching. Lance yells and so too does Blue, a howl that shatters the glass of his burning gaze. The beast is writhing, wings pinned by unforgiving roots bursting relentlessly from Pidge’s limp form – a ruthless answer for the magma that claimed her. Blue’s claws –  _ Lance’s _ claws – sink into the hide of the beast and stay hooked as the monster twists in midair. From his shallow scratches ice unfurls like white blossoms, deceptively sharp edges piercing the beast. 

 

A flash of red and Keith is there, biting down as his jaws glow with a heat unfamiliar to the chimera. It screams as ice and fire meet along its flesh, burning hot and cold and white. Another impact and Hunk is snarling, reinforced jaws clamping down on the monster’s. Magma spills from the gaps between its teeth, and Hunk suffers for it, but still the lions cling until Shiro appears in a streak of cutting light. 

 

Lance sees Hunk’s grip melt and the light fade from his eyes, feels Keith weakening beside him in the sputtering of sparks, and he hears the snap of Shiro’s wings as they shatter against the beast –  _ through _ the beast – until they’re all in pieces, but the monster is too. 

 

Claws slide out of softened metal flesh and Lance is flung free in the beast’s death throes. He sees the sky and churning waves and burning forest spin around him – a whirlwind of everything he could and could not save – until he meets the ocean. Water rushes in on him, through his broken sight, steadily paling with the ice that creeps over it. 

 

In the end, he never closes his eyes.

 

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

Death is everything and nothing like he expected. There is darkness – or at least he thinks it’s darkness, it’s hard to tell when he has no senses to perceive. Whatever it is, it’s neverending. It goes on, and on, and on, like the universe. Maybe it’s eternally expanding as well – and when he thinks it, the stars appear. Pin pricks of  _ something _ begin twinkling into existence, forming the constellations he remembers as a kid on Earth. They dance around him, twisting and morphing in space as he wills it.

 

Then, a whisper.

 

A sensation.

 

He can feel the brush of something against his mind – uncertainty, fear, self doubt, and a burning need to prove oneself. Then the words come, soundless but present:  _ I’m good enough, I’m good enough, I can do this _ – a familiar chant. One he remembers thinking when his own personal darkness crept in. 

 

“You are good enough,” he wants to say, to reassure, but what comes aren’t words, but fleeting images and feelings; a house on the coast of a pink ocean, a massive ringed planet in the sky, the touch of feather flowers and a voice like wind chimes. 

 

The desperate chant ceases. Relief that is not his own floods him, but it’s more than that – it’s fiercely proud, and he feels an answer rumble within himself.

 

Then colour and light floods his vision, and he finds himself looking at a familiar glowing interior.

 

_ ‘About time you woke up _ .’ 

 

Words? No. Concepts. Inside his head? No. More than that. Further. 

 

‘ _ For a lion supposedly the most accepting with new paladins, he sure is picky.’ _

 

They flicker inside his body, its boundaries unknown, a touch, a voice, a taste. Colour. Sensation.

 

_ ‘That was the last lion’s personality, you know.’ _

 

And he knows these presences, he isn’t sure how, but the glimmer of emeralds and the smell of earth after rainfall, keyboards tapping, warm sunshine and baked bread, slick oil and tacky glue. He knows them, and as his mind struggles to assign order to his perception, he finds his own silent voice.

 

_ ‘What... _ What? _ Guys? Pidge?  _ Hunk?’

 

_ ‘Morning dude.’ _

 

_ ‘Rise and shine.’ _

 

The elation is imminent, even though confusion breaches first.  _ ‘What’s going on?’ _

 

_ ‘You know exactly what’s going on. Now look down before your paladin starts crying.’ _

 

And he does, turning his gaze down – trying to comprehend the boundless energy in his body – to see a small alien looking up at him, jaw agape. At first he thinks it’s Nyma, but this one is ganglier, her eyes wide and cerulean, roped hair braided in a thick, intricate style. She gazes at him like he’s something terrifying and magnificent, and he sees the beads of sweat on her brow, can taste her own dry mouth, can hear the fear in her frantically beating heart and the hope – that pride, that relief – swelling alongside it.

 

Lance adores her immediately.

 

_ My paladin,  _ he thinks.

 

_ ‘Who’s surprised Lance’s paladin is pretty?’ _

 

_ ‘Not me.’ _

 

Something like a laugh rumbles in Lance’s chest. His paladin gapes at him, and he realizes he’s purring.  _ ‘Quiet, you two. I think we’re bonding.’ _

 

_ ‘Yeah, yeah, just let her get into your headhole and let’s go grab Keith’s paladins.’ _

 

_ ‘What? Keith’s? Where?’ _

 

_ ‘They keep running for it, and it’s getting annoying. He’s awake and grumpy because of it. Whoever heard of twins piloting the same lion anyway?’ _

 

_ ‘Leave it to Keith to be difficult.’ _

 

_ ‘Wait so, if we’re the lions… then…?’ _

 

_ ‘What? You thought it’d be over? The universe is always in need of saving.’ _

  
_ Fair _ , decides Lance as he lowers himself down to eye his paladin. She’s still nervous, even as she reaches out with a hand to rest her palm against his nose. He sees, then, the type of paladin she’ll become, and he lets her in.

**Author's Note:**

> brief headcanons for future paladins bcos im a dink:
> 
>  **yellow** : a balmeran!! a heavy hitter with a great sense of humour, made funnier just by the way she talks so Proper. she was the first to be found utterly by accident when allura brought the lions to a balmera so they could be fixed with the help of a greater energy source than what they had available. everything kind of snowballs from there.  
>  **green** : an olkari!! part of an envoy to the castle for the alliance. they're great at pretending they know what's going on, fake it till you make it is their motto, but when they wander off following the whispers of pidge waking up, they don't realize it isn't faking it if you're _actually_ a certified badass. there's some self esteem issues there when you're part of a race of geniuses.  
>  **red** : remember that space pirate race from space mall??? yeah no idea what they're called, but keith chose twins. technically they were conjoined by an arm, got chopped, so they've got a missing limb each to match. they're mischievous af, ferociously loyal to each other from growing up on the streets, and quick learners. they want nothing to do with that saving the world bs, but they're also desperate for family so it isn't really all that hard convincing them.  
>  **blue** : hunk made some offhand comment about her looking like someone lance would like as a paladin. then they watched her make a fool of herself trying to impress the yellow paladin, and then won a sharpshooting bet in the marketplace to prove she could, and then the red twins pickpocketed the green paladin and she chased them down by boxing them in on all sides – and pidge was like "yo maybe you're right"  
>  **black** : sleeping quietly, wakes up occasionally to let allura pilot, but both shiro and allura know it isn't quite right _yet_.


End file.
